Best-selling journalist Antony Loewenstein trav­els across Afghanistan, Pakistan, Haiti, Papua New Guinea, the United States, Britain, Greece, and Australia to witness the reality of disaster capitalism. He discovers how companies such as G4S, Serco, and Halliburton cash in on or­ganized misery in a hidden world of privatized detention centers, militarized private security, aid profiteering, and destructive mining.

Disaster has become big business. Talking to immigrants stuck in limbo in Britain or visiting immigration centers in America, Loewenstein maps the secret networks formed to help cor­porations bleed what profits they can from economic crisis. He debates with Western contractors in Afghanistan, meets the locals in post-earthquake Haiti, and in Greece finds a country at the mercy of vulture profiteers. In Papua New Guinea, he sees a local commu­nity forced to rebel against predatory resource companies and NGOs.

What emerges through Loewenstein’s re­porting is a dark history of multinational corpo­rations that, with the aid of media and political elites, have grown more powerful than national governments. In the twenty-first century, the vulnerable have become the world’s most valu­able commodity. Disaster Capitalism is published by Verso in 2015 and in paperback in January 2017.

Vulture capitalism has seen the corporation become more powerful than the state, and yet its work is often done by stealth, supported by political and media elites. The result is privatised wars and outsourced detention centres, mining companies pillaging precious land in developing countries and struggling nations invaded by NGOs and the corporate dollar.
Best-selling journalist Antony Loewenstein travels to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Haiti, Papua New Guinea and across Australia to witness the reality of this largely hidden world of privatised detention centres, outsourced aid, destructive resource wars and militarized private security. Who is involved and why? Can it be stopped? What are the alternatives in a globalised world? Profits of Doom, published in 2013 and released in an updated edition in 2014, challenges the fundamentals of our unsustainable way of life and the money-making imperatives driving it. It is released in an updated edition in 2014.

Four Australian thinkers come together to ask and answer the big questions, such as: What is the nature of the universe? Doesn't religion cause most of the conflict in the world? And Where do we find hope?
We are introduced to different belief systems – Judaism, Christianity, Islam – and to the argument that atheism, like organised religion, has its own compelling logic. And we gain insight into the life events that led each author to their current position.
Jane Caro flirted briefly with spiritual belief, inspired by 19th century literary heroines such as Elizabeth Gaskell and the Bronte sisters. Antony Loewenstein is proudly culturally, yet unconventionally, Jewish. Simon Smart is firmly and resolutely a Christian, but one who has had some of his most profound spiritual moments while surfing. Rachel Woodlock grew up in the alternative embrace of Baha'i belief but became entranced by its older parent religion, Islam.
Provocative, informative and passionately argued, For God's Sake, published in 2013, encourages us to accept religious differences, but to also challenge more vigorously the beliefs that create discord.

After Zionism, published in 2012 and 2013 with co-editor Ahmed Moor, brings together some of the world s leading thinkers on the Middle East question to dissect the century-long conflict between Zionism and the Palestinians, and to explore possible forms of a one-state solution.
Time has run out for the two-state solution because of the unending and permanent Jewish colonization of Palestinian land. Although deep mistrust exists on both sides of the conflict, growing numbers of Palestinians and Israelis, Jews and Arabs are working together to forge a different, unified future. Progressive and realist ideas are at last gaining a foothold in the discourse, while those influenced by the colonial era have been discredited or abandoned. Whatever the political solution may be, Palestinian and Israeli lives are intertwined, enmeshed, irrevocably.
This daring and timely collection includes essays by Omar Barghouti, Jonathan Cook, Joseph Dana, Jeremiah Haber, Jeff Halper, Ghada Karmi, Antony Loewenstein, Saree Makdisi, John Mearsheimer, Ahmed Moor, Ilan Pappe, Sara Roy and Phil Weiss.

The 2008 financial crisis opened the door for a bold, progressive social movement. But despite widespread revulsion at economic inequity and political opportunism, after the crash very little has changed.
Has the Left failed? What agenda should progressives pursue? And what alternatives do they dare to imagine?
Left Turn, published by Melbourne University Press in 2012 and co-edited with Jeff Sparrow, is aimed at the many Australians disillusioned with the political process. It includes passionate and challenging contributions by a diverse range of writers, thinkers and politicians, from Larissa Berendht and Christos Tsiolkas to Guy Rundle and Lee Rhiannon. These essays offer perspectives largely excluded from the mainstream. They offer possibilities for resistance and for a renewed struggle for change.

The Blogging Revolution, released by Melbourne University Press in 2008, is a colourful and revelatory account of bloggers around the globe why live and write under repressive regimes - many of them risking their lives in doing so.
Antony Loewenstein's travels take him to private parties in Iran and Egypt, internet cafes in Saudi Arabia and Damascus, to the homes of Cuban dissidents and into newspaper offices in Beijing, where he discovers the ways in which the internet is threatening the ruld of governments.
Through first-hand investigations, he reveals the complicity of Western multinationals in assisting the restriction of information in these countries and how bloggers are leading the charge for change.
The blogging revolution is a superb examination about the nature of repression in the twenty-first century and the power of brave individuals to overcome it.
It was released in an updated edition in 2011, post the Arab revolutions, and an updated Indian print version in 2011.

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“It is very disheartening that investors and otherwise sensible journalists continue to fall for the Rupert Murdoch charisma machine and ignore the obvious fact that News Corp is a nothing but a badly performing business mostly run by untrustworthy people.”

Antony, sorry for the OT break, but I'm curious to know your reaction to this:Fifteen-year-old Abdel Kareem Mohammed Abu Habel sits in an Israeli prison after he tried and failed to martyr himself last year. Would he do it again? Without a doubt, he says.Abdel Kareem Mohammed Abu Habel agrees with Israeli critics who say that next week’s disengagement from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank will do nothing to stop Palestinian terrorist attacks against Israel.Sitting in his jail cell in the Sharon Detention Center in central Israel, he also said he would never accept peace with the Jewish state, even if Israel eventually pulled back to its pre-1967 borders, behind the so-called Green Line. He doesn’t even know what the Green Line is.The only peace he wants “is to get back all our lands,” meaning the entire state of Israel.“We don’t want the Jews on this world,” he said.Now I would like to see how you twist and flip to somehow(?) make the Israelis look worse. All while being the kind of Jew that this kid wants to turn into so much charred meat.I've got my popcorn ready. let the absurdity begin.

leftvegdrunk

Mike, g'day.Isn't your blog closed now? And yet you are happy to continue your grandstanding elsewhere? And off topic.What's the story, Mike? Do you have a day job?

Andjam

Most day jobs don't involve working weekends … yet.

Mike Jericho

You have a very pretty hat, Mr Dirt.I should have known that this would only draw evasions. It kinda exposes the undeniable fact that Israel can withdraw all the way back to Tel Aviv, and the attacks will go on.

evan jones

Israel withdraw to Tel Aviv and get out of Jerusalem? What a good idea – consistent with initial UN legitimation. Given that Mike J has a tertiary education, he is not very bright, an occupational hazard for Zionists.The hapless Habel is right. Israel is sitting on stolen land. The pathological condition of Habel is entirely rational, given that he has spent his entire life in captivity on grounds of the innate inferiority of his race. The pathological condition of Mike J, having enjoyed a privileged upbringing, is another matter. So also the pathological condition of all those loony tunes who inhabit the Settlements. These desire urgent attention and amelioration, for the good of all of us.Were Israel to get out of the whole of the West BAnk and East Jerusalem as well as Gaza, the Habel's of this world would either be transformed or be sent to reform school. Israel would still be getting a bargain, sitting on more territory than it deserves.MOre fundamentally, Israel should get out of the West Bank and East Jerusalem because it is morally right. In this respect the existence of a Abdel HAbel is irrelevant.Its Ethics 101. Back to school for Mike J.

Antony Loewenstein

Mike, your ignorance is rather humourous. All Pales hate Israel and want it destroyed? Jesus, what are you, Netanyahu?Evan is completely right. It takes a lifetime of Zionist indoctrination to still believe such nonsense, but then, it's so much easier relating to Israelis than Pales, isn't it?

Iqbal Khaldun

Damn straight Ant. This discussion proves that to the well indoctrinated, regardless of the topic (in this case the Murdoch press), the argument is always the same. Palestinians "depraved enemeis of (Jewish) civilisation", Israelis the victims, along with their hundreds of nukes and NATO-strength army.Speaking of the Murdoch press, somewhat 'comforting' to read Kohler, ever an economic conservative as there was, being so outspoken against the big Rupe. Comforting because even within the bounds of mainstream analysis, Murdoch's absurdity has not escaped unnoticed.

Glenn Condell

Mike how do you spin the same sort of extreme statements from so many Zionists – I posted pages of them a while ago; will find them if you want. Notables like Ben Gurion, Dayan, Begin, Meir and plenty of rabbis, leading academics etc. Rehavem Ze'evi, a former Sharon govt minister, called Palestinians 'lice which must be exterminated'. Not long after, they exterminated him. Hard to feel sorry for him really,just as I'm sure you'd find it hard to sympathise with your example above. They named a street after Ze'evi, giving you some indication of official Israeli sentiments toward their own exterminating extremists. I believe there's an officially sanctioned shrine to Baruch Goldstein too. Perhaps Ivan Milat should get one as well, eh?The point is there's extreme nihilist killers on both sides. The Israelis have killed 3 times as many Palestinians than they have lost with their state army alone, without even having to call on their analogues of your bloke above. Those analogues, like Goldstein, reckon the army isn't killing ENOUGH Palestinians, and so they take matters into their own hands, safe in the knowledge that after a few tut-tuts, they'll be canonised. So both sides can be criticised, but one has far more reason to be upset than the other. Guess which?Back to topic – I recall a certain Alan Kohler breathlessly confessing after sitting at the feet of Murdoch that he and his fellows in the press found it hard to criticise or question the great man, given his status as perhaps the only globally important Australian, one who took the world on and won- that sort of thing. They were all so starry-eyed at that presscon that Rupert got away with claiming he was challenging the ARL's 'monopoly' of rugby league… no one thought to counterpoint his own desire simply to replace the ARL monopoly with his own, or his relentlessness in further concentrating Austrlia's media ownership pool. It wasn't the done thing back then. People grow up I suppose, but times must have changed too.

Andjam

Israel withdraw to Tel Aviv and get out of Jerusalem? What a good idea – consistent with initial UN legitimation.Good grief, you want Israel to withdraw not to the pre-1967 borders (which had Israel in the western part of Jerusalem), but to the lines drawn up before the war in 1948?The hapless Habel is right. Israel is sitting on stolen land.Which bits of Israel do you consider non-stolen, if any?the Habel's of this world would either be transformed or be sent to reform schoolMike quoted primary sources to support his assertion. Are you going to do the same?Mike, your ignorance is rather humourous. All Pales hate Israel and want it destroyed?Mike didn't say that (and I don't believe it – a few even want Israel to stay in Gaza and the West Bank). But I'm willing to bet that the vast majority of terrorists want Israel destroyed, rather than just withdrawing to pre-1967 lines.Rehavem Ze'evi, a former Sharon govt minister, called Palestinians 'lice which must be exterminated'.Did he refer to Palestinians or to terrorists as lice?